News Story

Next XCOM: Enemy Unknown DLC "not along the lines of Slingshot"

Jake Solomon of Firaxis has revealed that they plan on being less 'content-heavy' and a little more 'system-heavy' with XCOM: Enemy Unknown's next dose of DLC; fans 'want more elements'.

Slingshot was the first premium DLC for XCOM, but it wasn't received very well because of its linear nature. The game is a "great platform for more things" in the future, like aliens, items and maps.

Solomon agrees with the criticisms of Slingshot, and how fans were expecting more new elements being added to gameplay, not just more content.

"We haven’t announced our next steps, although we have, I think, publicly announced that there is going to be more content in 2013. What I’m saying is that I don’t disagree with anything anybody is saying that they want. We all, as a team, completely agree that XCOM is a great platform for more things, basically," Jake Solomon told PC Gamer.

"More items and aliens and maps. We totally get that. It’s just that those things take time."

The team is excited to work on XCOM because they can add new things to the platform, and they are in consensus with the community. "We hear what people want and we totally agree. We haven’t heard anything where we disagree. We’re in tune with that. We’ve got our ears to the ground."

Slingshot added a new team member and also let some technology be access a little earlier than otherwise available, but it didn't add much of anything new. I guess it felt like a pre-order bonus pack to most. "What it really came down to is that that was a content-heavy DLC, but it wasn’t a system-heavy DLC," explained Solomon.

"I think that what people wanted… I don’t know that we were surprised by some people saying, “Hey, what I wanted was more elements in the system. I wanted more aliens and guns and items.” Whatever people wanted. I think that’s something that we agree with, and we maybe weren’t surprised by it."

"We just didn’t have the throughput to add more items to the system yet. A lot of that, frankly, if I can be entirely honest, is probably my fault. My design came together so late that a lot of things… We spent a lot of engineering time at the end just on getting the game completed and out there."

Just recently Firaxis released The Second Wave DLC for XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It's a free treat that adds some customisable options for another playthrough of the campaign, like guaranteeing critical hits when flanking or our squad taking more prolonged damage over time or to stats when injured.